The hoisting roping of an elevator comprises one or more hoisting ropes, which are arranged to move the elevator car and possibly also a counterweight. When reeving an elevator, it is known in the art that each rope of the hoisting roping is arranged into its position by threading it end first through the diverting pulley set of the elevator and by fixing the ends of the rope into their position in the elevator hoistway or on the elevator car, depending on the suspension arrangement. One prior-art method to do this is to lower the rope end first into the elevator hoistway e.g. to the counterweight from the machine room. However, this is awkward because a supple hoisting rope cannot be lowered by supporting it from its end, since as the end descends downwards the mass of the top parts of the supported end would start to uncontrollably pull additional rope from the reel. For this reason the lowering of the rope must be braked in other ways, although at the same time, however, the end of the rope must also be controlled. The arrangement is complex, slow and expensive to implement. Another reeving method is to guide the rope into its position end first by pulling the rope with a hoisting device from a rope reel that is in the bottom part of the elevator hoistway. Thus the rope can be guided end first to pass through the pulley sets of the elevator system such that the end of the rope is released last from the rope reel and the whole rope is finally pulled into position. One problem of this solution is the large rope weights. Pulling a rope through the whole system is awkward and requires high capacity from the pulling apparatus. Likewise, the deadweight of the rope may endeavor to pull the rope back, so that the rope must always be locked into its position e.g. during the transfer of a pulling device or of a pulling point. The problems described above occur particularly when reeving an elevator, the counterweight and/or elevator car of which is suspended differently to a 1:1 suspension ratio, e.g. with a 1:2 suspension ratio, because the path of passage of the ropes of the elevator is in this case conducted upwards and downwards and generally comprises a number of diverting pulleys, which circumstances make lifting the hoisting rope into its position more complicated. There can be a need to perform a number of lifting phases, which lengthens the time needed for reeving.